


After All

by kumatt



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance (Voltron) Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:03:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumatt/pseuds/kumatt
Summary: The sky's still grey, and back off of main street, the loneliness comes back at him. Why can't it just be over with? What can it be doing to his mind to be proceeding from porn puns to this fucking angst. He takes back his earlier thought. The grief. It's not that he's full. It's like. Like taking a shot glass and sticking it under Niagara Falls and calling it full. Like, full is not sufficient. "over flowing" is not sufficient. It's like dragging a bucket to the bottom of the Atlantic and calling it full. It's not full. It's fucking drowned. It doesn't have water. The water has it.In the aftermath of the Shiro's death, Lance is having a hard time picking up the pieces. The band's disbanded. His friends are busy with their own grieving. And it's hard not to worry about Keith.





	After All

**Author's Note:**

> Very special thanks to [Abyssinia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssiniana/pseuds/Abyssiniana) for betaing.

Pidge, crying. Pidge never cries. Fuck.

Hunk, not crying. Even more fucking wrong.

The cold, feeling right. Maybe the only thing feeling right. The leaves, no longer colourful, now just dead. The weather saying, _it's over_.

The walk back down the familiar streets, now drab and mean. The small town, no longer folksy, just small. Small and empty, with a big hole in the shape of a person.

Every feeling feels cliche, and also all cliche feels absurd and inhuman and insufficient. Saying "we'll remember him" would be too god awful to even consider.

The most affected, of course, is Keith. He walks with the group, which should feel nice, but just feels like another slather of wrong. He shouldn't be with them, but he shouldn't be alone either. He should be with the one person who's just not here anymore.

These thoughts pelt at Lance's mind, and he only realizes after several minutes that it's also actually, literally raining. His face chills and the water runs down his cheeks. The weather feels right.

The worst and wrongest thought is about whether it means something about Lance. About how he should feel. Did he lose? Did he win? 

In this competition with Keith, that Keith had never even noticed, Lance had always, always lost. He'd wanted the chance to be with Shiro. To be sweethearts who finished each other’s sentences and grew old together maybe. He’d lost that chance. Now Keith had too. _Good_.

Lance digs his fingers into his palms and winces. He wonders what will become of him, if he can think something so awful. It feels like he’s trapped in a closet with a hyena, or some other biting animal. What to do when the unforgivable thought is coming from inside your own head?

What he needs is company. But… Pidge, Hunk, Keith... They’re just paces away on the wet sidewalk, but they’re shut off to him. They might as well be... Lance stops himself. _Not dead_. He recoils. He's hardly feeling anything, but he knows he still needs them. Or just he needs there to be no more heartache. He's full.

He pulls his head up and finds that they've all walked to their rehearsal space. The shitty bunker of a building behind the record store.

_God._

Lance shuffles inside. Heart squeezed, shivering. Why? But also, how could they not?

Inside, Pidge and Hunk have taken up some sort of mindless vigil. Standing where they might stand if this had been a rehearsal. Just missing their instruments. And their bassist. And their friend and their hearts and breath and everything.

Keith walks past them, over to the wall. Lance catches sight of the poster. The tacky, corny poster, with "Voltron" inked across it in neon green 3D text. He finds he hates it and waits for Keith to tear it down.

Instead Keith calmly pulls the poster off by it's taped up corners and rolls it up. With intent, and no emotion at all. Lance is transfixed. What now? But Keith just turns and leaves. It cuts like everything else seems to. A new cut layered on top of the rest. Ok.

The stage door slams shut, and Keith's gone. Shiro's gone. _Keith's gone._

Pidge picks up a patch cord and tries to tidy it up. It tangles on an effects pedal.

"Fuck!" screams Pidge, throwing it down.

She wrestles with the mess of cords and pedals on the floor. Those were Shiro's pedals, Lance thinks.

"Fuck!" says Pidge again. She tosses the mess back to the floor and storms out too.

Hunk, folds and unfolds the funeral program in his hands, and absently sits down on a chair by the wall.

Lance opens and closes his mouth, trying to catch up. _Keith, wait_ , _Pidge, no, it's ok._ He looks at Hunk, and tries to form something like _Hey_.

"Huh," he says, instead.

* * *

It's a week later, which should rather be counted in minutes. It's not enough minutes later.

Lance has finished his shift and he's walking down the main drag. He knows the only destination is the jam space, or maybe maybe the record store, but neither of those places is safe. What on Earth does “safe” mean, though?

The Toddler's Trunk Bookstore is coming up on the left. The name, still and always creepy. As he approaches, Lance checks to see what's on display.

"Make Way for Ducklings?" says Lance to nobody. He chews on it. There's always something.

"Make hay? Hmm… No… Oh! Take pay for fucking...s?"

He smiles to himself. That was a good one. Nobody ever appreciated these forays into porno parody children's book titles, but still, he misses the groans. Maybe he should text this one to Pidge. No. Best not to.

The most shocking thing about grief is that it makes you lonely, no matter what. Maybe there's more to that, but Lance is in no mood for typical undergrad philosophizing. Leave it.

He rounds the corner and sees Pidge. They make eye contact and smile and then falter. Are they allowed to smile? How are they to be with each other? As in, after what fashion? Should they hide their faces? Or should they be getting drunk or something?

Nothing comes to mind. So they enter the cinder block rehearsal space in silence. Hunk's already there.

Pidge picks up her instrument, runs her hands along the keys once and puts it down with distaste, like it's spoiled food. Hunk is holding his favourite guitar. He's picking at it with the pickups turned down so it doesn’t make any sound, and doesn't seem to have noticed. Lance sighs. He spends half an hour sorting through his sheet music and goes home.

* * *

Another week passes. Pidge and Lance exchange texts, breaking the silence. They resolve that they need to do something. A drink seems like the thing to do.

So they meet at the town's shitty bar and they each get a beer. But that leaves them with just their mutually miserable company and two unwelcome beers.

After a solid two minutes of silence, Pidge speaks.

"We should play some music," she says. "Right? I mean, right?"

Where's the decisive, don't-give-a-shit Pidge? Gone, of course. In keeping with the theme.

"Yeah. Right. Yeah," says Lance.

They finger their pint glasses and avoid eye contact.

"Just a... you know... nothing big. Just music," Lance continues.

"Yes!" says Pidge, too loudly. "Yeah. I..."

Lance catches her eyes by accident, and it ruins the distance they thought they needed.

Pidge lets out a gasping sound and sags her head to the scratched up table top. Lance reaches out and can't quite touch her.

It occurs to him (that is, it re-occurs as it does at every waking minute) that he's not grieving correctly. He hasn't cried. He hasn't hugged. Not really. He's failing at being a person, he thinks. He thinks they all must think. The fingers of his hand curl up.

Pidge's sobbing dies down.

"Music," says Lance, with an edge of desperation in his voice.

"Music." says Pidge. Lance's face perks up. That sound. That was the decisive Pidge. A little bit of hope stirs that maybe they'd make it through the day.

* * *

Pidge was always the most irritatingly talented. It would have been fun to tease her about playing saxophone if she wasn't so good at it. On top of that she actually knew stuff about how music worked she was probably at least as good at the piano as him. It wasn't fair. But it did give Lance the excuse to call her Holt-rane, and that wasn't nothing. At least, it used to be not nothing.

Lance sighs. He’s so thoroughly sick of himself. Of being no fun. He used to pride himself on being fun. That was sort of his core competency, at least as far as he was concerned. Ah well.

Pidge picks up her saxophone, and they exchange a look. Lance can’t bring himself to lay out the customary nickname but they smiled at each other, knowing it was there.

Lance sits down at the piano.

"What are we gonna play, though?" asked Lance.

"I dunno," said Pidge. "But how about..." and she starts playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Lance stares, incredulous. Jazz standards, from Pidge? “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, even? But it was happening, and that was that.

Lance starts accompanying. Finding his way through, back to music. After a few minutes, they stop and look at each other.

"That was terrible," declares Lance.

"It was," says Pidge. "More, though."

They set back to it, and soldier along, playing mediocre jazz for another half hour. Lance segues them into “All the Things You Are”. Then “Body and Soul”. And more. And they make a hash of all of them, but Lance feels like maybe some warmth has returned to the world.

* * *

Lance keeps busy with work. He takes on more kids for tutoring. But eventually it can’t be helped: Lance has a next day off. No shift work. No tutoring.

He shrugs on his jean jacket and decides he's going out. He still feels the tingle that maybe things will be ok.

It lasts for a couple blocks and then he gets a call.

It's the school. They've got Shiro's stuff. Someone needs to collect it.

"You should call Keith," says Lance. Or did Shiro put down Lance’s name and not Keith’s? Lance can't stop himself from wondering.

"We did. He's not answering. Again, I'm sorry to disturb you Mr. McClain. But we do need to clear out the carrel at the library."

"Right," says Lance. "Uh, right. I can help with that."

"We would really appreciate that. Thank you again. And uh, sorry for your loss."

Lance manages to hang up before the sob rattles out of him. Fuck. _Sorry for your loss._ Fuck.

He turns on his heel and starts walking to the university library. Just a chore to do. An errand. He can do errands. He's a handy helper. He puts in his earbuds and forgets to put on a song.

Passing by the main drag, Lance’s mind has wandered to idle, easy thoughts. He makes a point of zig-zagging so he'll pass by that one block. The bad bakery, the insurance place with the funny surnames and The Toddler's Trunk. It's like therapy, he decides.

What's it going to be today?

"Thomas the Tank Engine?"

This should be easy. Those trains always seemed like they had something going on. Some sort of weird secret train sex? But he can't find the pun.

"’Penis the Tank Engine’? Not my best work."

He turns back off of the main street and makes his way up the hill to the school. He hums something to himself as he picks up his pace and tries to keep his spirits up. A few blocks later he realizes what it is. It's the damned Keith Mystery Melody.

Keith was reliably dark and not prone to catchy tunes, but months ago Lance had caught him humming something. Keith had never let slip what it was, and it had tormented Lance almost as much as he had tormented Keith.

Keith. _Haven’t seen him in a while._ Lance’s thoughts find their way back into their new favourite ruts.

It's hard to live your life when your only peace is when you're distracted. Like living out of your car because your house is getting fumigated. Or torn down.

The sky's still grey, and back off of main street, the loneliness comes back at him. Why can't it just be over with? What can it be doing to his mind to be proceeding from porn puns and humming to this fucking angst. He’d written down on some angry diary page that he felt full with grief. But here and now it feels not that he's full, but overfull. Like taking a shot glass and sticking it under Niagara Falls and calling it full. Like, full is not sufficient. "over flowing" is not sufficient. It's like dragging a bucket to the bottom of the Atlantic and calling it full. It's not full. It's fucking drowned. It doesn't have water. The water has it.

You empty the bucket now and then, but there’s always more ocean.

The houses feel cold as he walks past. They must be full of people, Lance reasons. But with the grey sky and the cold and the leaves off the trees. It feels like maybe there's just nobody left. Like maybe it's time to just wrap it all up. All of it. That would make sense.

Then he sees the mail truck, and his train of thought jumps the tracks again. Just regular life after all. Everyone else is fine. It's just him.

He wonders about Shiro putting his name down as a contact. _Does that mean something?_ Asks a little voice in his head. Should he be relieved that he'll never know?

_Back to this again, huh? What is this?_

Lance finds that he's suddenly angry. He clenches his fists and scowls at the pavement.

What is any of it? What place does he have in this? The guy with the crush on the guy who died? The least important guy in the dead guy's band? The band that's already so fucking absolutely done? What is he? What the fuck is the point of him now, or ever?

Tears run down his face. _Don't._ Fucking self-pity. _You're not the one who died. You're not even the boyfriend of the one who died. Get over yourself._

* * *

The library people try to be nice. It's awful. The box of stuff is awful. Some of it is Keith's. Which is worse. Way worse actually.

Did they love each other? It seemed like it, looking at these little bits of domestic life. Keith’s old campus radio mug. A patch for Keith’s old, shitty screamo metal band that Shiro had apparently taped to something. His monitor? What business was it of Lance’s?

What would have happened? Would they have lived happily ever after? Married and etc.? How does that feel?, Lance asks himself.

_Not great._ The tears surge back up as he carries the box back down the hill. It starts to rain.

He doesn't pass the bookstore. He's already done it for the day. “Penis the Tank Engine”. Lance’s feelings overshoot idle amusement and land on self-loathing.

The worst is yet to come. Keith. He goes to Keith's apartment. The sliver of the diced up house-turned-student-housing.

Lance knocks, hoping for no answer. Maybe he can just leave the box?

He’s already put it down and turned away when the door opens.

"Were you going to leave my shit in the rain?"

"Keith."

"Thanks, Lance."

Lance looks at Keith. You. I can still be mad at you. You got to have him. We had so fucking little of him to go around, and you took it.

Lance blushes, ashamed as if he’d said it all out loud.

Keith steps back through the threshold, box under one arm.

“Look-”, says Lance.

Keith slams the door.

Welp.

Some time later Lance discovers that he’s walked to the record store. “The Yellow Note”, formerly, hilariously referred to as “The Brown Note”. Lance pushes open the janky door and finds Hunk behind the counter. Radiohead’s playing on the speakers and one lone customer paws through the $5 bin.

He’d wondered if Hunk got “bereavement” leave or something. Guess not. There he is behind the counter.

Lance and Hunk look at each other. They haven’t spoken since the funeral. Since the crash, almost.

Hunk puts down the LP he was shrink wrapping and walks around the counter. His face is solemn. He walks up to Lance and pulls him into a hug. A crushing, heavy, warm, awkward hug. Lance exhales, stress and tension squeezed out of him along with a lung-full of breath. He wraps his arms around Hunk. He hears himself take a rattling, uneasy breath, and lets himself sag into Hunk’s arms.

Leave it to Hunk to cut through the solitude like it wasn’t even there.

They stand apart. Lance feels fatigue rush in as the spring tension begins to uncoil.

Hunk gives him a long look.

“Hey,” he says to the one customer. “It turns out we’re closed. Sorry.”

The customer looks up, confused. Hunk puts an arm to his back and gently, firmly shows him to the door.

“Yeah, we’re closed. Time to go. Here. Have a free EP of Wolf Axe.”

Hunk pushes the vinyl into the dude’s hands as they pass the counter. The kid leaves, still confused, and Hunk locks the door behind him.

“Come back to my place. I have new music.”

They spend the evening listening to Hunk’s new discoveries. They pick out key phrases. They make overreaching comments about chords and modes. They make bold proclamations about which things are being referenced, and what it means. They manage to fully distract themselves for at least a few hours.

The night comes to an end. Hunk gently reminds Lance that he needs to go home. The cold air hits Lance’s face and the switch flips back. He walks home feeling dull and hollow and goes to sleep adrift between feelings, unable to shake off the damp night air.

* * *

One week follows another, for some reason. The bag of insufficient hours is so large now.

Lance continues to hold down his dishwashing job. He makes it to his tutoring appointments. He never breaks down in front of any of the miserable kids suffering through piano lessons.

He starts to hang out with Pidge and Hunk again. They even jam a bit. Pidge has been composing some new stuff, and they take a stab at playing it. The arrangement is complicated, and cold, and they are a sloppy mess. Everybody talks about how good it’s going to be and they never revisit it.

Hunk takes up the ukulele, which loses Pidge $20 to Lance from a two year old bet.

Lance can’t decide how he feels about Hunk’s ukulele music. He’s used to obsessive wank-off solos and complicated twelve string business. Not strumming. Is Hunk giving up? No, as it turns out. One evening after work, Hunk pulls out the uke, starts to pluck something out and then, to Pidge’s and Lance’s shock, he sings.

Hunk, who wouldn’t even sing the backup chorus. Whose favorite genre was “instrumental”. He sings and it’s sweet and raw and lovely. Only Shiro had ever sung before.

Lance’s heart aches and he smiles. This new life just kept hurting, but at least it was starting to feel unstuck. Starting to feel like life lived. Like moving forward. Like maybe he could still happen upon something new and dear. That was Hunk’s singing voice. The first sign of life after death.

* * *

Most days Lance sampled from the full menu. A little bit of joy with his friends. A little bit of grief. Some rage. Some sadness. And then some more grief, but worse, like one of those migraines where you go blind. And then... laundry.

And in between the modest peaks and profound valleys, he thinks about life, and how he got here.

Showing up at this tiny college town. Knowing nobody. Doing a shitty job of being a student. Not really making it happen with the piano. And then meeting Shiro. As his tutor. And learning finally how to sight read, and what a Lydian scale is. And music was music again. And Shiro himself... this ridiculous, tall, Japanese ball of charm and sweetness... Lance was smitten from the start.

And then getting invited to join Shiro's band. Getting to meet the gang. It felt like a high. Back then everyone was strange and weird, but it felt like it was all going to work out. Even with Keith. Who instantly pissed Lance off with his effortless pouty realness. His insufferable accidental hotness.

Even when Lance dropped out and started working odd jobs, it all seemed possible.

And all along, Lance tried to work up the nerve. He'd never dated anybody. How do you ask someone out when you're gay? Can you just do that?

It turns out you can. Keith did. The moment still burns. Some childish part of Lance's brain still stomps its foot. I saw him first. I loved him more.

These thoughts have always paired well with lonely walks and tears.

Even before the accident.

But the accident. That's a different flavour.

That's just fucking extraterrestrials coming down and laying waste to reality. Just some unreal shit. Your friend. Your crush. Your person who's real and special and not supposed to be made of flesh and bone for crushing between dashboards and side panels. 

This flavour can be enjoyed alone, or with self-pity. And there’s always room for survivor guilt.

The crash, the funeral. The end of the band. The on again/off again continuation of reality, despite all reason. Somewhere in there, Lance loses the plot.

* * *

Pidge and Lance spend an afternoon trying to have fun with a tortured arrangement of Ravel for saxophone and piano. Not her finest work. They’re still using their rehearsal space. They all agreed they should move, but it hasn't happened. Nobody wants to touch Shiro’s stuff. Or Keith’s.

Pidge takes another swing at a phrase that ought to sound light and airy but just sounds honking and lost. She yanks the mouthpiece out of her mouth and mimes gagging into some imaginary bucket.

“Ok,” says Lance. “I think that’s enough of this experiment.”

“Yeah. All right. But I’m not admitting defeat. This is a tactical retreat so I can regroup and attack again tomorrow.”

“Ok, Admiral Holt.”

Lance runs his hands along the keyboard. He’s taken to playing whenever he’s sitting at the piano now. He doesn’t know if it’s something needy and distracting, or if it’s some new, renewing font of musical energy. Probably not the second one.

He noodles away without thinking much about it.

“Classical, huh?” says Pidge, shouldering her saxophone case.

Lance frowns. What had he been playing? He frowns deeper. That stupid Keith Mystery Melody.

“What?” says Lance, trying to play it cool. Trying to segue into a random flight of notes.

“That bit you just played. That’s from a really nice organ concerto. I’m glad to see you’re finally joining civilization, Lance.”

“Am not,” says Lance.

“All right. Prepare for more and better Ravel next time, barbarian.”

She waves an arm at him as she ducks out the door. He waves back. Should he go?

Lance finds his mind wandering back to its usual rut. The reheated pile of useless feelings. He stares at the piano, waiting for it to tell him what to play. Anything to turn down the thoughts.

The door bangs open and it's not Pidge or Hunk or whoever it ought to be. It's Keith. Who walks in and sits down at the drums like it's just fucking time to play music.

Which it is.

He fusses with his drums a little, moves his hi-hat for whatever reason, and then just lays in with a beat. It's fast. It starts simple, and, of course, angry. But that's just Keith. And then he turns it. The syncopation. The layers. The tempo's sloppy, but it feels tight. It's captivating. Lance has never been able to deny Keith's talent, and he takes it in, still stunned that any of this is happening. _At least it means Keith's still alive._

After a solid minute of rambling, insane, off-the-cuff drum solo, Keith stops as suddenly as he started. He lowers his hands and looks pointedly at Lance.

"So are you going to play or what?"

Lance blinks and looks down. _Oh right, this is a piano._

He's intimidated. But fuck that. No he's not. He can do this.

He sets in with a frenetic improvised jazz riff. He can’t help but try to show up Keith. Running down from the high notes, hammering on the low notes. Roaring up and down. He builds and builds and then lets himself get lost. He wanders down dark alleys and finds his way back. He bangs out chords and flutters up through glissandos. He realizes this was important. He feels dumb for not having gone here before. Cut loose and gone crazy. And as he lets up, Keith steps in. Complementing. Driving the tempo, carrying Lance forward. They trade off back and forth. They indulge in flights of meandering solo. They come back to one. They, against all odds, play a duet.

It rides them, and they ride it. They work up a sweat they play so hard and so long. And Lance wonders another thought. _Could we have done this if Shiro was still alive?_ And then that's it. He falters and stops, and it's over.

His hands come to rest on the white keys and he wonders again why he couldn't just be a little less of a piece of shit. He hangs his head and makes a mental appointment to cry about it later when Keith's not around.

Keith. Keith's stopped drumming. Because Lance ruined it. He's walking around the drum kit and approaching Lance. He's going to say something shitty and wander off. Or say nothing at all and storm off.

He comes up to Lance and Lance stands up, defensive. Keith slams his hands on the lid of the upright on either side of Lance, pinning him. Lance scowls back. Unsure, but wanting to look like he’s up for whatever awful thing this will be.

Then Keith leans in. Stops. Scans Lance’s face. Hesitates. And then it’s a kiss.

Lance’s eyes go wide. He shifts back in shock, backing into the piano. No and yes, Lance thinks. And then, yes and yes. Fuck it, and yes and fuck me. And _fuck me_. He leans into the kiss. Keith pushes up against Lance, shoving the piano. The piano shifts on its rusty wheels and rolls backward. It bangs against the wall, and roars across all its strings.

* * *

They don’t talk on the walk to Keith’s place. Lance’s mind races around and around like a busted carousel. _Don’t. You’ll regret this. What are you thinking._ But playing counterpoint is just _I don’t care._ on repeat. Which matches Keith’s vibe.

They come up to Keith’s door and he whips around. This is it, Lance thinks. This madness will end. He’ll tell me to fuck off and that’ll be it. But Keith grabs Lance’s face and kisses him again. And Lance kisses back again. And somehow this banging of pots and pans feels like music to Lance. This nonsense makes about as much sense as anything, actually. And unlike the rest of it, Lance wants this.

They stumble up the stairs. Keith pulls off his shirt. _He’s fucking hot._ It’s still infuriating, but it’s… convenient. Lance shrugs out of his shirt and Keith’s already shimmying out of his too tight jeans (god damn him). _Right._ Lance undoes his belt.

They’re naked before they even make it to the bed. They’re fucking before they even get around to another kiss. Lance’s inner argument continues, but the Who Cares side is winning. Lance’s feet bounce in the air and the waves wash over him. Keith isn’t really looking at him. But then, Lance isn’t really looking at Keith either. He’s seeing stars, which is better anyway.

Lance closes his eyes. That’s… that’s better. This is good.

“Shir-” says Lance, not quite managing to choke back the “r”.

Keith freezes.

Lance’s eyes flash open just quick enough to see the hurt flick over Keith’s face, and then those feelings are fucking buried. Keith gets off the bed. Pulls the condom off. Collects his pants.

“No, I-” stammers Lance.

Keith locks eyes with him. “Get the fuck out,” his voice breaks, but only a little bit.

Lance walks home. It’s late. It’s cold. All in all, he’s had better days.

The children’s bookstore is promoting “Hansel and Gretel”. Lance is mad at himself for even noticing. No jokes are forthcoming.

* * *

Lance stays in bed for the next day watching bad tv. He ignores his phone.

When he finally turns his phone back on that night he discovers some worried text messages from Hunk, and a quick note from his boss at The Spaghetti Junction about how his job depends on not missing his next shift.

So on day 2 of the new world of hurt, Lance does leave his dingy basement apartment and shuffle in to wash dishes. It gives him a fresh new place to dwell on what manner of trash he is. The time does not fly by.

He gets off and intends to take his to-go container of spaghetti and sauce home to eat in the dark, but Hunk's waiting for him.

"What happened to you?" asks Hunk. It's no longer fun when they ask each other questions like this. Sometimes, what’s happened is you’ve just had a breakdown. Again.

"I..."

"Look. It's fine. Tell me later. In fact, you can tell me while we’re eating your spaghetti."

Lance looks askance at Hunk. "You know this is the worst spaghetti."

"I know that it is free food, and I don't get to take home free records from my job, and I couldn't eat them even if I could." he frowns at the sentence he just uttered.

Lance feels the gang of vultures crouching on his chest lift, and some life creeps back into his frame. _Hunk, man._

"Ok. Spaghetti in exchange for a copy of that Moroccan guitar lady's album?"

Hunk grins.

Over their meal of room temperature spaghetti and meatballs. Lance tries to act like it's just the same bad scene that it was two days ago. Hunk isn't buying it.

"No dude. What happened."

Lance withers. His mouth opens, and to his horror he explains exactly what went down.

"Oh," says Hunk. "That's... woah. Dude."

Lance pulls his knees up to his chest and sinks back into Hunk's mammoth couch. Maybe he can just get lost in here like loose change? Come out again during spring cleaning when all of this impossible nightmare has passed?

"Please, Hunk. Be nice."

"Lance, that is not a great tack to take, coming from you," Hunk leans back in mock judgement. "Oh ye who always has something to say about my girlfriends."

"I..."

"Just kidding, dude. I'm not going to. I mean. I don't know. It's super fucked up. But... I mean. Are you ok?"

Lance locks eyes with Hunk.

"Let me try that again. Did he? Do you?" he stalls out.

"It was fine," says Lance. "Until it wasn't."

"Right. I think we pinpointed what the turning point was.”

“I’m disgusting,” says Lance. It feels like the faucet’s broken on his mouth. This isn’t what he wants to say.

“Hey,” Hunk says. “Look at me. You _are_ disgusting. But that’s all to do with how much you like Supertramp. It has nothing to do with the sex you have or who you have it with.”

Lance laughs, caught off guard.

“Don’t- man. I called him by the name of his dead boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I know. You… you should avoid doing that. But what about before that?”

“That was a mess too. What the hell was I doing?”

“Getting laid, dude. You could do worse,” says Hunk. He looks reflective. “I mean, you could do a hell of a lot worse. Keith is-”

“Keith is Keith, and there’s nothing more damning I can think of than that. I don’t know if you caught it just now, but I was crushing on his- on Shiro-” Lance’s voice catches and he stops short. Not trusting himself to say anything else.

“Yeah, Lance. That’s not news,” Hunk speaks softly. “We all knew that. You’re… not exactly subtle.”

Lance puts his face in his hands. He’d love to not have another breakdown in front of his friend.

“Look. Let me lay some obvious stuff on you, just in case,” Hunk picks up his ukulele as he talks and gently plucks at it. “It’s ok that you liked Shiro. It’s ok that you were jealous of Keith. It’s ok that you feel all sorts of ways about it now. It’s ok that you had sex with Keith. I mean I think you should give yourself permission to be ok with that.”

“But what about-”

“Shiro?” Hunk’s hands fall still on the strings. “He’s not here, man. I’m here. Keith’s here. You gotta be here too.”

Lance hears the waver in Hunks voice. 

“Anyway, grieving is weird. I mean, look at me, giving in to this stupid cliche. Big fat Samoan with a ukulele...”

“Yeah, but you play a mean ukulele dude.”

“Right. Ok. I know you’re joking. But have you heard me play Stairway to Heaven?”

Lance protests. He already knows Hunk’s good. Really. But Hunk won’t have it. He sets into Stairway to Heaven and plays it all the way through, leaning into the vocals and prodding Lance with his toe until he starts singing along.

Lance falls asleep on Hunk’s couch and wakes up ten hours later. They indulge in what they call “Student Brunch”, which is Hunk’s scrambled eggs and taquitos Lance picks up at the 7-11.

* * *

It’s winter. Many minutes have passed. Enough to get tired of counting. Not enough to be done grieving, but enough to get good at living in the meantime.

Lance, Pidge and Hunk are walking down the main drag on a quest for bad donuts from the bad bakery. They pass the children’s bookstore and Pidge and Hunk stop and look expectantly at Lance. It’s the first time they’ve been by the store together since Shiro.

“Right!” says Lance. He scans the display. “‘Charlotte’s Web’? Fuck me.”

He turns to leave but Pidge and Hunk wait expectantly.

“Jesus. Fine. Ch... No wait,” Lance grins triumphantly, taking a step back for effect. “Charlotte’s Bed!”

Pidge and Hunk instantly, pointedly, lose interest and start walking away.

“You two are being unfair. Listen…”

“No,” says Pidge, not bothering to turn around.

“Harlot’s, uh...”

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” says Hunk.

“Impossible.”

“Yes, we all thought so too, but here we are,” says Pidge, holding open the door. The florescent lights of the shitty bakery beckon beyond.

* * *

It’s definitely too cold to sit outside, but tradition is tradition, so they chew on their donuts and sip their scalding hot coffee on the frigid park bench across the street from the bakery. It’s deployed in small square of park beside a town monument to something or other.

“Hey, are either of you guys in touch with Keith?” asks Pidge.

Lance and Hunk exchange a look.

“Oooookay,” says Pidge. “What the fuck was that?”

“No,” says Lance, maybe too quickly. “I haven’t seen him in maybe a month. Why? Is this about the space?”

“No,” says Pidge. “I haven’t been in there in a while. Just not… you know... loving it. But maybe Keith’s there. Could we swing by? I heard from a friend that he hasn’t been showing up to classes and they just tried at his place.”

Lance tries to muster his most nonchalant shrug.

“Ok, fucking secret agent. You can explain that bullshit later. If you two have gone back to fighting...”

“Boy, it sure is chilly,” says Hunk. “Let’s just head over to the space now.”

Pidge is too obviously cold to muster a good retort, so they throw their bunched up trash in the trashcan and walk briskly down to The Yellow Note’s cruddy cinder block neighbour.

There’s no Keith to be found. Hunk exchanges a worried look with Lance while Pidge texts her friend. Lance starts to develop some fresh new fears. He can’t say anything. What does he know? What good would it do to worry Pidge? He’ll keep the worry for himself.

* * *

Hunk and Lance decide to swing by Keith’s apartment just to double-check. The knock on the door echoes hollowly back at them. Then they spot the sign in a window, reading “For Rent”.

Hunk says he’s going to try and track down Keith’s family via the school registrar.

Lance tells some lie about what he’ll be doing, and heads back to the practice space. It might always be a mess, but Lance has the image of that stupid campus radio coffee mug burned into his brain and it was definitely there. Keith had been there and he’d be back.

So it works out. Lance would rather apologize in private and avoid parading the stupid shame in from of Hunk and Pidge. It would also make for a tidy murder, if Keith should want to do Lance the favour. _Not super funny, actually,_ thinks Lance to himself.

He passes the bookstore again. Force of habit.

“Charlotte’s bed,” he says to himself with a congratulatory laugh. “Some pig!”

He walks a few more steps and then stops. “Oh shit. Keith, you nerd!” He hopes things aren’t as bad as they seem so he can maybe lord this over Keith some day.

He’s cracked the code of the Keith Mystery Melody.

When Lance arrives back at the space it’s still empty, but he finds more evidence. Not just the mug, but an old backpack with some clothes in it, a couple extra blankets stuffed in the bass drum and a toothbrush in the cabinet in the space’s nightmarish bathroom. Lance plunks himself down at the piano bench out of habit and waits.

He startles awake in the dead of night and makes a discordant bang when his hands spasm on the keyboard. He picks his face up off the keys, feeling the impression they’ve left on his cheek. He scans the room and there’s Keith, frozen mid-stride, a bag of junk food in his hand.

“What are you doing here?” asks Keith.

Lance tilts his head forward and gives Keith a heavily lidded stare.

“I’m practising the piano. What about you?”

“Drums.”

“With your toothbrush?”

“Christ. Fine. I’ll leave.”

“Where will you go?” Lance asks softly as Keith emerges from the disgusting bathroom with his toothbrush in hand.

Keith stops in his tracks again.

“Wherever I go, you’re not fucking invited.”

“I know,” says Lance. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

“Good.”

“But seriously. Do you have anywhere to go? Did you really move out of your apartment?”

Keith picks up his mug and dashes it on the cement floor with a crash. Little porcelain bits scatter everywhere.

“Jesus!” says Lance.

Keith yells. Inarticulate. He grabs at the nearest piece of his drum kit, one of the toms, and brandishes it above his head. He spins around and seems to consider throwing at Lance, but decides to throw it back at the rest of the drum kit instead. It lands with a crash, toppling cymbals to the floor. He steps into the midst of the ruined kit, looking for something else to pick up and throw, but he catches his foot on something and falls down between the bass drum and another tom. The high-hat falls over beside him in one last crash. Then Keith lies still. Defeated.

Lance sits dumbfounded and the two of them observe a strange silence. Lance hunts for anything to say and comes up empty. He tries to approach Keith, and Keith recoils, pulling into himself. He looks like Lance felt on the day of the funeral. Mere paces away from other people, and utterly unreachable.

Lance gets that. Fair enough. But still, maybe it’s time to take a page out of Hunk’s book and call bullshit on stoic suffering in solitude.

He sits back down on the piano bench, lays his fingers on the keyboard and plays that melody. Keith’s one fragment of accidental sweetness. The piece that Pidge recognized from Saint Saen’s organ concerto. A theme to be hammered out with an organ and a symphony at the climax of the fourth movement. But not now. Here Lance plays it softly, slowly. Because he knows better, thanks to talking pigs. He knows that Keith, who seems like he entered the world already 20 and already jaded, was humming the lullaby from motherfucking “Babe”. And to kill time while he waited for Keith, Lance learned the words.

He circles the melody back around and begins to sing. His voice is reedy and uncertain. Nothing like Hunk. But lacking every other sensible thing to do, it might as well be this.

> If I had words to make a day for you

Lance hears a quiet gasp from somewhere in the vicinity of the former drum kit.

> I’d sing you a morning golden and new.  
> I would make this day last for all time.  
> And paint you a night deep in moonshine.  
> And paint you a night deep in moonshine.

Lance finishes softly and lays his hands to rest on the keys. He looks over and catches Keith’s face with tears running down before he turns away.

“Dammit,” says Keith.

Lance approaches Keith and feels for once that he’s fine saying nothing. He’s finally ready to be here. He reaches out his hand and waits.

Keith glances up, cheeks wet and eyes red.

“Dammit,” he says again, and grabs Lance’s hand, letting Lance help extricate him from the drum kit mess.

They stagger a few steps away from the carnage together, and then Lance pulls Keith into an embrace.

Lance feels Keith heave a sob into his shoulder.

“That song is so cheesy.” Another sob.

“I know, Keith. And you’ll never live it down.”

“Fuck,” says Keith. “I broke the mug. That was his mug. He… Oh dammit.”

“The mug deserved it.”

“I lost my apartment.”

“I know. Stay with-”

“You?!”

“God, no. Stay with Hunk. His sofa is the shit.”

“I don’t know...”

“Look. The point is, stay with us. Don’t fucking leave, ok?” Lance breaks out his crooked smile. “We need a good drummer.”

**Author's Note:**

> ## The Melody
> 
> This is sort of why I wrote this fic in the first place. I love the symphony, I love the song, and I just love the melody.
> 
>   * [Saint Saen - Symphony No. 3 - Allegro](https://youtu.be/ZWCZq33BrOo?t=1695)
>   * “If I Had Words” Scott Fitzgerald & Yvonne Keeley adapted Saint Saen's melody into a reggae themed pop song in 1989. Nigel Westlake used the theme and the lyrics in his score for the movie Babe. There’s loads of covers to be found on youtube. I think [this one's](https://youtu.be/pa69zTbEtPw) my favourite.
>   * [The theme in the Babe soundtrack](https://youtu.be/353im7EvyAw) (plus the Reggae mice version of “If I Had Words”)
> 

> 
> ## Kids on the Slope
> 
> I was thinking of these two when I wrote their jam session and basically why I thought of Keith and Lance as drums and piano in the first place. This probably isn’t what contemporary music students would consider to be modern or interesting jazz, but eh, I like it.
> 
> Warning: spoilers for Kids on the Slope, I guess? It’s basically just music, but still.
> 
>   * [Medley from Episode 7](https://youtu.be/jRHJntLYMh0)
>   * ["Moanin'" from the Finale](https://youtu.be/HdAeK9xdal8)
> 

> 
> ## The Moroccan Guitar Lady
> 
> Heard about [her](https://youtu.be/pgxCIs-SFpk) on a podcast.


End file.
